Material for the Preparation of the Programme of the R.S.D.L.P.

Draft Programme of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour

Party[1]

I.Commodity production is ever more rapidly developing in Russia, the
      capitalist mode of production becoming increasingly dominant in it.

II.As the result of continuous technical progress, small-scale
      production is being ousted to an ever greater degree by large-scale
      production. The most important part of the means of production (of the
      land and factories, tools and machinery, railways and other means of
      communication) is becoming concentrated in the hands of a relatively in
      significant number of capitalists and big landowners as their private
      property. The independent small producers (peasants, handicraftsmen, and
      artisans) are being ruined in growing numbers, losing their means of
      production and thus turning into proletarians, or else becoming servants
      and tributaries of capital. Increasing numbers of working people are
      compelled to sell their labour-power and become wage-workers, who are
      dependent on the property-owners and by their labour create the wealth of
      the latter.

III.The greater the degree of technical progress, the more the growth of
      the demand for labour-power lags behind the growth of its supply, and the
      greater are the opportunities for the capitalists to intensify
      exploitation of the workers. Insecurity of existence and unemployment, the
      yoke ofexploitation, and humiliation of every kind are becoming the lot of ever
      wider sections of the working population.

IV.This process is being still more aggravated by industrial crises,
      which are the inevitable outcome of the basic contradictions of
      capitalism. Poverty and destitution among the masses exist side by side
      with wastage of social wealth in consequence of the impossibility of
      finding markets for commodities produced.

V.Thus, the gigantic development of the productive forces of social
      labour, which is constantly becoming more socialised labour, is attended
      by monopolisation of all the principal advantages of this development by a
      negligible minority of the population. The growth of social wealth
      proceeds side by side with the growth of social inequality; the gulf
      between the class of property-owners (the bourgeoisie) and the class of
      the proletariat is growing.

VI.But as all these inevitable contradictions of capitalism increase and
      develop, the number and the solidarity of the proletarians, their
      discontent and indignation also grow, the struggle between the working
      class and the capitalist class becomes sharper, and the urge to throw off
      the intolerable yoke of capitalism mounts.

VII.The emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class
      itself. All the other classes of present-day society stand for the
      preservation of the foundations of the existing economic system. The real
      emancipation of the working class requires a social revolution—which
      is being prepared by the entire development of capitalism—i.e., the
      abolition of private ownership of the means of production, their
      conversion into public property, and the replacement of capitalist
      production of commodities by the socialist organisation of the production
      of articles by society as a whole, with the object of ensuring full
      well-being and free, all-round development for all its members.

VIII.This proletarian revolution will completely abolish the division of
      society into classes and, consequently, all social and political
      inequality arising from that division.

IX.To effect this social revolution the proletariat must win political power,
      which will make it master of the situationand enable it to remove all obstacles along the road to its great goal. In
      this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat is an essential political
      condition of the social revolution.

X.Russian Social-Democracy undertakes the task of disclosing to the
      workers the irreconcilable antagonism between their interests and those
      of the capitalists, of explaining to the proletariat the historical
      significance, nature, and prerequisites of the social revolution it will
      have to carry out, and of organising a revolutionary class party capable
      of directing the struggle of the proletariat in all its forms.

XI.But the development of international exchange and of production for
      the world market has established such close ties among all nations of the
      civilised world, that the present-day working-class movement had to
      become, and has long become, an international movement. That is why
      Russian Social-Democracy regards itself as one of the detachments of the
      world army of the proletariat, as part of international Social-Democracy.

XII.The immediate aims of Russian Social-Democracy are, however,
      considerably modified by the fact that in our country numerous remnants of
      the pre-capitalist, serf-owning social system, retard the development of
      the productive forces in the highest degree, render impossible the
      complete and all-round development of the proletariat’s class struggle,
      and lower the working population’s standard of living; they are
      responsible for the Asiatically barbarous way in which the
      many-million-strong peasantry is dying out, and keep the entire people in
      a state of ignorance and subjection, denying them all rights.

XIII.The tsarist autocracy is the most outstanding of these remnants of
      the serf-owning system and the most formidable bulwark of all this
      barbarism. It is the bitterest and most dangerous enemy of the proletarian
      emancipation movement and the cultural development of the entire people.

Forthese

      reasons[2]the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party advances as its immediate
      political task the over throw of the tsarist autocracy and its replacement
      by arepublicbased on a democratic constitution that would ensure:

1)the people’s sovereignty, i.e., concentration of supreme state power in
      the hands of a legislative assembly consisting of representatives of the
      people;

2)universal, equal, and direct suffrage, both in elections to the
      legislative assembly and in elections to all local organs of
      self-government, for every citizen who has reached the age of twenty-one;
      the secret ballot at all elections; the right of every voter to be elected
      to any of the representative assemblies; remuneration for representatives
      of the people;

3)inviolability of the person and domicile of citizens;

4)unrestricted freedom of conscience, speech, the press and of assembly,
      the right to strike and to organise unions;

5)freedom of movement and occupation;

6)abolition of social-estates; full equality for all citizens,
      irrespective of sex, religion or race;

7)recognition of the right to self-determination for all nations forming
      part of the state;

8)the right of every citizen to prosecute any official, without
      previously complaining to the latter’s superiors;

9)general arming of the people instead of maintaining a standing army;

10)separation of the church from the state and of the school from the church;

11)universal, free, and compulsory education up to the age of sixteen;
      state provision of food, clothing, and school supplies to needy children.

Toprotect the working class and to raise its fighting

      capacity,[3]the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party demands:

1)that the working day be limited to eight hours for all wage-workers;

2)that a weekly rest period of not less than thirty-six consecutive hours
      for wage-workers of both sexes employed in all branches of the national
      economy be established by law;

3)that all overtime be prohibited;

4)that night-work (from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.) in all branches of the national
      economy be prohibited, with the exception of those branches in which it is
      essential for technical reasons;

5)that employers be forbidden to employ children under the age of
         fifteen;

6)that female labour be forbidden in industries specifically injurious to
      the health of women;

7)that the law establish employers’ civil liability for workers’ complete
      or partial disability caused by accidents or by harmful working
      conditions; that the worker should not be required to prove his employer’s
      responsibility for disability;

8)that payment of wages in kind be

      prohibited[4];

9)that state pensions be paid to aged workers, who have become
         incapacitated;

10)that the number of factory inspectors be increased; that female
      inspectors be appointed in industries .in which female labour
      predominates; that observance of the factory laws be supervised by
      representatives elected by the workers and paid by the state; piece rates
      and rejection of work done should also be supervised by elected
      representatives of the workers;

11)that local self-government bodies, in co-operation with elected
      representatives of the workers, supervise sanitary conditions in living
      quarters provided for workers by employers, and also see to the observance
      of rules operating in such living quarters and the terms on which they are
      leased, with the object of protecting the wage-workers from employers’
      interference in their lives and activities as private persons and
      citizens;

12)that a properly organised and comprehensive system of health
      inspection be instituted to supervise working conditions at all
      enterprises employing wage-labour;

13)that the Factory Inspectorate’s activities be extended to artisan,
          home, and handicraft industries, and to state- owned enterprises;

14)that any breach of the labour protection laws be punishable by law;

15)that employers be forbidden to make any deductions from wages, on any
      grounds or for any purpose whatsoever (fines, rejections, etc.);

16)that factory courts be set up in all branches of the national economy,
      with equal representation of workers and employers.

Besides,with the object of democratising Russia’s state economy, the
      Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party demands that all indirect taxation
      be abolished and progressive income-tax be introduced.

Witha view to eradicating the remnants of the old serf-owning system, the
      Party will work

      for[5]:

1)abolition of land redemption and quit-rent payments, as well as of all
      services now imposed on the peasantry as a taxable social-estate;

2)annulment of collective

      liability[8]and of all laws restricting the peasant in the free disposal of his land;

3)restitution to the people of all sums taken from them in the form of
      land redemption and quit-rent payments; confiscation for this purpose of
      monasterial property and of the royal demesnes, and imposition of a
      special land-tax on members of the big landed nobility who received land
      redemption loans, the revenue thus obtained to be credited to a special
      public fund for the cultural and charitable needs of the village communes;

4)establishment of peasant committees

a)for the restitution to the village communes (by expropriation, or, when
      the land has changed hands, byredemption, etc.) of the land cut off from the peasants when serfdom was
      abolished and now used by the landlords as a means of keeping the peasants
      in bondage;

b)for the eradication of the remnants of the serf-owning system which
      still exist in the Urals, the Altai, the Western territory, and other
      regions of the country;

5)empowerment of courts to reduce exorbitant rents and declare null and
      void all contracts entailing bondage.

Workingfor the achievement of its immediate political and economic

      aims,[6]the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party supports every oppositional and
      revolutionary movement directed against the existing social and political
      order in Russia, but emphatically rejects all those reformist plans which
      depict every extension of police tutelage over the working masses as a
      step towards the solution of the social

      problem.[7]

Forits part, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party is firmly
      convinced that the complete, consistent, and lasting implementation of the
      indicated political and social changes can be achieved only by
      overthrowing the autocracy and convoking a Constituent Assembly, freely
      elected by the whole people.

[1]The theoretical part of this programme constitutes the draft proposed by
      one of the editors,

      Frey[9](and drawn up by him on the basis of
      G. V. Plekhanov’s original draft). The practical part of the programme
      (from the point indicated below to the end) is proposed by the whole
      committee, i.e., by the five editors.
—Lenin

[2]Here begins the text adopted by the committee as a whole.
—Lenin

[3]Frey moved that the beginning of this paragraph be altered to read as
      follows: “To safeguard the working class from physical and moral
      degeneration, and also to raise its fighting capacity in the struggle for
      its emancipation....”
—Lenin

[4]Frey moved that the following be inserted here (in the same clause):
      “that the law should establish weekly payment for all workers
      employed on a contract basis.”
—Lenin

[5]Frey moved that the following words be inserted here: “and for the
      purpose of facilitating the free development of the class struggle in the
      countryside,” so that the whole paragraph would read as follows:
      “With a view to eradicating the remnants of the old serf-owning
      system and for the purpose of facilitating the free development of the
      class struggle in the countryside, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
      Party will work for.”

—Lenin

[6]Frey moved that the beginning of the paragraph be altered to read as
      follows: “Fighting for these demands, the Russian Social Democratic
      Labour Party,” etc.
—Lenin

[7]Frey moved that the end of this paragraph he altered to read as follows:
      “...plans connected with any extension or consolidation of tutelage
      of the working masses by the police and officials.”
—Lenin

[9]Frey—V. I. Lenin’s pseudonym.

[8]Collective liabilitywas a compulsory measure making the peas
      ants of each village commune collectively liable for timely and full
      payments and for the fulfilment of all sorts of services to the state and
      the landlords (payment of taxes and land redemption instalments, provision
      of recruits for the army, etc.). This form of bondage was retained even
      after serfdom had been abolished, and remained in force until 1906.